Digital Service Innovation (made simple)

Digital services & markets, such as app stores, seem a quite modern innovation, and yet, as they say, there is nothing new under the sun. How should established players react or, better, respond ?

VCE's "User Interactions for Breakthrough Services" programme is exploring a future world of dynamically composable services, services which envisage an ecosystem more complex than today, where the user could make use of, not just a mobile phone, but also a range of wireless-enabled sensors, public interactive displays, gesture, temperature, haptic and pressure input/output capabilities.

Yet this world, too, will build upon the same principles and constraints of today's digital services & markets - capabilities and features such as platforms, generativity and control points. Similar tensions will exist between market players. Design of the system architecture will determine who can and who cannot exert control. On VCE's new YouTube channel you can find a series of 8 videos that aim to convey these underlying principles, using simple metaphors taken from the familiar physical world.

Don't be fooled however by the metaphors and the presentation. The strategies outlined have been derived from an analysis of over 1200 published web articles, describing decisions made by Apple and Google concerning their iPhone and Android platforms. The empirical data focused on these platforms as examples of highly successful digital ecosystems with seemingly different approaches to the control and cultivation of innovation. The full report is available to staff from industry member companies.